


A Sensation of April

by emjee (MerryHeart)



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluffy Smut, just two adorable people who want to bone down
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-31 11:04:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18589975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MerryHeart/pseuds/emjee
Summary: She slides his suspenders off his shoulders, then runs her hands down his chest. “Do you want to have sex?”They haven’t, yet, but it’s less a function of any ideology and more a function of “we live with other people and they come back without warning even when they say they’ll be away and also these beds are small so sure we could fuck but at what cost?”Or, springtime makes Cosette particularly interested in taking Marius' clothes off.





	A Sensation of April

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from M. Hugo ("She gave anyone who saw her a sensation of April and of dawn") with my sincerest apologies. Though, to be fair, based on his own personal life he really can't talk.

“Well,” Cosette says, opening the door of her father’s apartment with a flourish, “bienvenue chez Fauchelevent.”

“You’re sure your father is alright with this?” Marius asks as he follows her in, backpack slung over his shoulder.

“I told you, he’s away on a business trip this weekend.”

“That is not even close to an answer to my question.”

It’s a Friday afternoon in late April, and the weather is just starting to get consistently nice. Cosette drops her bag on the sofa and opens all the windows in the living room. A fresh, slightly damp breeze curls into the apartment, and she breathes it in.

“Wouldn’t you rather spend a weekend away from roommates and dorm food?” she asks. They both attend university so close to her father’s apartment it’s nearly laughable—Cosette doesn’t even need to live in campus housing, she could easily walk to school from here, but she and her therapist spend a lot of time talking about boundaries, and living separately from her father now that she’s technically an adult helps save them both from codependency, even if he is so close.

“I like Courfeyrac,” Marius counters.

“You adore Courfeyrac,” says Cosette, “and you know I think Musichetta is a gift from above, but you know they’re both happy to be rid of us for a few days so they can pursue their own…interests. Also, we’re only-children, Marius, we’re not wired to sleep in the same room as someone else.”

Marius squints at her, clearly adding up the number of times one of them has used an overnight dorm pass and slept curled against the other in a twin bed. “That’s not what I meant,” she clarifies.

He sets his bag down and walks over to her, casually tangling his fingers with hers. “You’re right,” he says, low and sweet. “It’s the perfect way to celebrate the end of classes.” They both have a week of final papers and portfolios coming due, but this weekend is a brief reprieve, a celebration of how close they are to another summer of working as a day camp counselor (Cosette) and helping new immigrants learn English (Marius).

Cosette leans in and kisses him, soft and lingering. “Let’s open some wine and make dinner.”

 

They end up stretched out on the sofa with pasta primavera and the Globe’s filmed production of _As You Like It_.

“Hanging poems about the woman you love on trees sounds suspiciously like someone I know,” Cosette teases, nudging Marius with her foot.

“I thought we’d agreed never to discuss my tumblr days again.”

“Oh, don’t be embarrassed, darling, we were both on the internet between 2012 and 2015. Such things were unavoidable.”

She loves this production, she’s seen it more times than she can count, and she loves how Marius will let her point out small things about the costume design, how it compares to the actual early modern fashions, how it helps establish character. Her attention is somewhat diverted tonight, however.

Because who gave Marius Pontmercy the fucking right to walk around every day looking like _that_ , much less the right to look like _that_ while sitting on the opposite end of the sofa, running his foot absentmindedly against her calf. His suspenders are the color of the sky outside, that springtime blue that is almost purple, and he rolled up his shirtsleeves while they were making dinner, which is just playing dirty because he _knows_ what that does to her. Her Marius, with his beautiful brown freckled skin and his soft curls. The absolute _nerve_.

She always gets like this in spring. Even before she met Marius, before she had any boys to direct any of those feelings toward—and what fun that was, at her all-girls Catholic school, surrounded by so many utter badasses but also a hearty amount of sexual shame and compulsory heterosexuality—the return of mild weather and all those flowers blooming everywhere makes Cosette want to smash her mouth against the mouth of another consenting party and start taking off clothes.

By sheer force of will, she makes it through the whole play, including the curtain call jig. She switches off the television as Marius takes their dishes to the kitchen and puts the leftovers in the refrigerator. She hears him start in on the dishes, and God, she loves him so much, but this is really not the time.

“Hey.”

He looks over his shoulder and smiles at her. “Hey.”

“You can leave those.”

“Oh, I don’t mind, you did most of the cooking—oh.”

She’s come up behind him and hooked her fingers through his unoccupied belt loops. “Leave them,” she whispers against the back of his next. He shuts off the tap, wipes his hands on a dishtowel, and turns to face her.

She hauls him down and their mouths are already open, tongues sliding against each other, she winds her arms around his neck and pushes her fingers into his hair. He moans and fists his hands in her shirt, one of those absurdly soft button-downs she owns in nearly every color.

He wants to undo everyone one of those smooth buttons, has wanted to for months, but this is as far as they ever get, this ferocious kissing that makes him dizzy and giddy and so, so turned on; it’s like that one kiss from _New Girl_ everyone always talks about, except when he kisses Cosette it’s _every damn time_.

(“So which kiss is the one everyone talks about when they talk about _New Girl_?” Marius had asked Courfeyrac when they started watched it together freshman year. It was Marius’ first viewing, and Courfeyrac’s fourth. “You’ll know,” Courfeyrac had said. He was right.

Incidentally, when Marius came home last October and said “I kissed Cosette and did not make an utter fool out of myself,” Courfeyrac took one look at his face and said “Oh my God, you saw through space and time and everything, didn’t you?” And he had.)

Cosette pulls away just long enough to gasp “Living room?”

“Yeah,” he breathes, and they stumble through the doorway to the next room. Marius assumes they’re headed back to the sofa, but Cosette backs him up against the wall, not without a bit of force, and _wow_ , why does he like that as much as he does.

She presses herself flush against him and they’re kissing again, he can’t tell where he ends and she begins, he sucks her bottom lip between his teeth and she makes a noise he can only describe as delicious, and he’s untucking her shirt from her skirt and sliding his hands up her bare skin, tracing her spine, grabbing at her any way he can—

“Shit, sorry,” he says, leaning his head against the wall with a _thunk_. “Is all this okay?”

“God yes,” she says, “don’t you dare apologize.” She slides his suspenders off his shoulders, then runs her hands down his chest. “Do you want to have sex?”

She’s so matter of fact about it, God bless her. “Do you?”

“Very much.”

They haven’t, yet, but it’s less a function of any ideology and more a function of “we live with other people and they come back without warning even when they say they’ll be away and also these beds are small so sure we could fuck but at what cost?”

He looks down at her flushed face, feels her hands against him, twitching like they want to be everywhere.

“I do too.”

They’ve had all the other conversations—they’ve both never been with anyone one else, any which way; they’re both clean; she was already on birth control when they met to deal with Period Cramps from Hell.

“Marius?” Cosette trails her fingers back up and rests her hands on his shoulders.

“Hmm?”

“When I say I want this, I mean—listen, you’re the sweetest man alive and I love you to pieces—you don’t have to—I want this so much, and I’ll tell you what’s good and what’s not. And I—” Her gaze skitters away; he ducks his head and taps her chin to get her to look at him again. “This is so stupid, I know you wouldn’t do this, but please don’t be—I intend to fuck the way I kiss, which is with a lot of enthusiasm, and I don’t want you to be…put off—God, fuck the patriarchy, I hate that I’m even thinking about that—”

He cuts her off with a kiss, which he generally does not consider to be Best Practices, but it seems like the appropriate thing in the moment. She slides her hand up his neck and God alive, he wants her.

“Tell me,” he gasps, breath ragged. “Everything you want to do.”

“I want to suck you til you scream,” she murmurs, lips practically against his. His breath hitches in his throat, and he knows she notices. “I want you to yank my clothes off and, and eat me out—”

“Yes—”

“And I want know what it feels like to have you inside me.”

“Christ.” He presses a fierce kiss against her neck and his teeth leave marks. “When do we start?”

She answers by reaching for the waistband of his trousers.

“Wait,” he says. “Maybe, bedroom?”

“Yeah,” she breathes, and then they’re stumbling through another doorway.

Marius has been in this room before, but never for an extended amount of time. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t spent plenty of time thinking about that bed, though, with its fluffy duvet and its quality mattress and its seemingly boundless amount of room for more than one person, and the kind of _options_ that gives you when you’re fantasizing about laying your girlfriend down for a proper tumble.

He’s not definitely not fantasizing anymore, as Cosette pushes him down into an armchair by her bookshelf and kneels over him, straddling his lap. She’s taller than him this way, knees tight against his hips, and she bends down to take his mouth in another frenzied, frantic, I-need-everything-right-now kiss. He slides his hands under her skirt and cups her ass, pushes her down against him and rolls his hips under her.

“God, that’s good,” she says, but then she’s kneeling up again, and unbuttoning his pants. He pulls and kicks at them until they’re off, it’s not sexy, she doesn’t care. “I want try…” She trails off as she reaches into his boxers and wraps a hand around his cock. He exhales very slowly. She leans forward and kisses him, softer and slow this time, but just as deep, and it’s somehow even—filthier isn’t the right word, he scolds himself, sex isn’t dirty, but God, just this kiss alone makes him want to smoke a cigarette when it’s finished, and he hates cigarettes, that shit gives you cancer, and yet the point stands.

Cosette feels his cock twitch and pulse as she kisses him, and Marius feels her smile against his mouth.

“I feel very powerful right now,” she tells him.

“You should. I think you could get me to say yes to literally anything.”

“Take your shirt off.”

“That’s not even a hard one.”

“I know, but I want to watch you do it.” She leans back a little, gives him space to get his hands between them and start undoing buttons. He shrugs out of the button-down before yanking his undershirt over his head, and she’ll never understand how boys can just grab the back of their collar and tug and it’s the sexiest damn thing she’s ever seen.

And then Marius leans forward to press his forehead against hers as he reaches for _her_ buttons, and nope, maybe it’s just that she finds everything Marius does to be sexy.

He’s rougher than he might otherwise have been, but she said she wanted proper disrobing and she meant it. She’s a costume design student, for crying out loud, she can handle re-attaching some buttons if need be.

Marius yanks the shirt down her arms and throws it on the floor, then goes for the zipper of her skirt. She stands and lets it fall away, then Marius pulls her back to him. “I love this bra,” he says, running his fingers over the pale blue satin and lace, and then he notices that her underwear matches, and yeah, present activities were definitely her plan all along.

“Euphraisie Fauchelevent,” he murmurs, running a thumb over one of her nipples and smiling when she squirms, “did you bring me to your childhood home to seduce me?”

“Yes,” she admits, completely without shame, as she grabs his wrist and presses his open palm against her breast, “and it is absolutely working.”

“You know you seduce me, like, all the time. When we tried to study for finals together last semester—”

“It was a miracle either of us passed anything—”

“Or when you wore that dress to the language department semi-formal—”

“I take Winter Ball very seriously—”

“Or that night we all went out for midnight milkshakes in October and we ended up making out in that garden near your dorm.”

“I didn’t even plan that until we were squished into the corner of that booth at the diner, and we both know Courfeyrac was the reason that even happened.” Courfeyrac was the self-appointed Chair of the Seating Committee whenever a large group of them went out to eat.

“Still a seduction,” Marius insists, then realizes that Cosette is sliding off the chair and down between his knees. “Um.”

“I said I wanted to suck you til you scream,” she says, “and I meant it. If you want.”

“I’ve wanted it for so long,” he whispers. His eyes are screwed shut.

“Hey, sweetheart. Look at me.” She’s running her fingers up the inside of his thighs, trailing them under the fabric of his boxers. “Do you think about me when you touch yourself?” She knows the answer, but she wants to hear it.

“Yes,” he breathes, as she slides his boxers down. “All the fucking time. Thank God it’s ensuite single showers on this campus, I don’t know what I’d— _Jesus,_ Cosette.”

She’s taken the tip of his prick into her mouth and he absolutely cannot come right now, cannot cannot _cannot_ , he cannot let things end this quickly. She takes her mouth away long enough to say, “Keep talking. Tell me what you think about.”

“I think about kissing your breasts,” he says, “and running my tongue over your nipples—” she moans as she takes him farther and that is _just not fair_ , how can anything feel that good—“and hooking your legs over my shoulders and just eating you out for ages, I want to lick your clit until you’re thrashing, I want to feel your heels pressing into my back and I want to know what you taste like—Cosette—” She’s going faster now, taking him deeper, skimming her fingers against his balls, she had said she would do this until he screamed and she is a woman of her word—“ _Christ_ , please, that’s—” He lets out a long groan and slides his fingers into her hair, gently pulling her away. “That’s—no more, any more and this will be over so fast, you’re so good, oh my God, so good.”

A slow smile spreads across her face at his praise, and that is the face of a woman who’s realized what a hold she has on him, and there’s no one he trusts with power more than her, but she looks almost drunk with it, and that’s good, he thinks, that’s so good, she needs to know what she does to him.

“It’s—more instinctive than I thought it might be,” she says, climbing back onto the chair with him. “And I like it. I like how you taste, how you feel in my mouth—” She gives a little involuntary shriek as Marius hooks his hands under her knees and stands up, carrying across the room and setting her down on the bed. She stretches out on her back and he moves over her, propping himself up on his elbows, but she wraps a leg around him and pushes him down onto her. “I like the weight of you against me.”

He responds by pressing his hips against hers as he trails kisses across her face, down her neck, in that perfect corner of her collarbone, down, down, he works a hand under her back and she arches up to let him unhook her bra, he suddenly realizes that all those times she asked for help with the hook-and-eye closure on a dress were really just to prepare him for this moment, and his girlfriend is a genius who plays the long game.

She tosses her bra on the floor and he—there really is no other term for it—buries his face in her breasts, kissing and touching and squeezing and rolling her nipples between his fingers. The sound she makes when he takes one into her mouth is a sound he wants to hear every time they do this, because it’s so full of unabashed pleasure that it makes him even harder, which shouldn’t be possible at this point.

He moves to kiss her other breast, and uses one hand to stroke her through her underwear. She grinds against his hand, and he slides his middle finger under the fabric, rubbing it against her, and God, he can feel her getting wetter as he touches her, it’s a beautiful fucking world.

“How do I even get to be here?” he asks, sliding down her body, sliding her underwear off, sliding his tongue against her clit.

“Marius Pontmercy, fuck!” She grabs at the duvet. “Holy Mary mother of God fuck fuck fuck.”

“Did you learn to swear that like in Catholic school?”

“I’ll have you know I did,” she gasps. “I learned how to swear a blue streak but not about the present activities that are inducing the—my God, sweetheart, _yes_.” He’s just pushed his tongue inside her.

“How do you touch yourself?” he asks.

“I start with my clit, so, top marks there, and then my fingers—”

“—inside?”

“—yes, and you—curl them like when you say ‘come here’—” she shows him, “and keep doing that and my clit at the same time—” The noise she makes as he slides a finger inside her is supremely undignified and it absolutely does not matter. She’s so ready for him she doesn’t feel like she’s stretching at all. “Another,” she tells him, and he immediately obliges.

“What does it feel like? I’ve always wondered.”

She needs some kind of resistance, then remembers what he said about her heels and presses them into his back. “It’s almost like it tickles,” she says, “but in a—warm, erotic way, and I can feel it where you’re touching me, but also, all the way to here.” She takes his unoccupied hand and presses it against her lower abdomen, and he understands to keep pressing, even when she takes her hand away.

She goes to pieces after that, even though it’s a few more minutes before she orgasms. Words become impossible, the whole world is concentrated into Marius’ fingers stroking inside her, his hand pressing her down, his mouth pressing fierce kisses and long, torturous licks against her clit until she breaks, pleasure radiating through her body until she feels like she’s made of light, endorphins singing through her blood, and yep, this is definitely what drugs feel like, she is sure of it even though she’s never had anything stronger than alcohol. She is deliciously drunk on Marius fucking Pontmercy.

“Jesus Christ is risen today,” she says on an exhale when her power of speech returns. Marius recognizes it as one of her favorite long-form swears.

“Do you think God minds that people use their name so much during sex?” he asks, resting his head against her leg.  
“I think it’s entirely appropriate,” Cosette replies. “I’m so, so happy.” She laughs suddenly, like she can’t help herself, and there’s that glorious smile again, spreading from her face to his like a contagious sunrise. He throws an arm across her waist and holds her, nuzzling her neck and pressing soft kisses there.

After a few moments, she sighs. “I could go for more.” She reaches down and grasps him again, gives him a few slow, firm strokes as she presses her mouth to his. They’ve kissed themselves sore, and neither of them cares.

“Do you want me inside you?” Marius whispers between kisses.

“Desperately. Just…one second.” She rolls away and hangs off the edge of the bed, her hands rummaging under it until she reappears with—  
“How long have you been hiding lube under your bed?”  
“Well, now, when you phrase it that way—”

“Cosette. Exactly how long of a long game has this seduction been?”

“I’ve had this bottle since December.”

“It’s nearly _May_.”

“Yes, well, around October the frequency with which I was getting myself off increased rather sharply, and then Christmas break happened and I figured what the hell, might as well buy a bottle for this bedroom too—”

He kisses her again, he can’t help it, and it’s so fierce that they both topple over. She blindly gropes for one of his hands and passes him the bottle. He squirts some lube into his palm and strokes himself, then her, before closing the bottle and tossing it back to the floor. She lies back and he moves over her.

Cosette smiles up at him. “Take your time, okay?”

“Of course, darling.” He kisses the tip of her nose. “I love you.”

She leans up to press a quick kiss to his mouth. “I love you too.”

And he does go slow. He slides into her, inch by inch, letting her breathe and relax and adjust, tormenting her with long, slow kisses that end with her digging her fingers into his back and pressing against him, more, she wants _more_.

Only when he’s all the way inside her does she realize how much self-restraint he must be exercising. He buries his face in her neck, his breath uneven. “I know I said I’d take my time—”

“You have, you have,” she whispers, locking her ankles behind his hips. “Whatever you need, sweetheart, I want to feel you come inside me—”

He groans as he begins to move; she curls her fingers in his hair and gives it a slight tug. “Look at me.”

Marius lifts his head.

“I want to look at you while we do this,” she says. “Kiss me when you come?”

He nods, already beyond words, although he does have the presence of mind to work one hand between them and roll his thumb across her clit, she loves him so much. She comes again as he thrusts into her, any everything goes soft around the edges, and it stays that way until his lips come crashing down to meet hers. She feels him shudder inside her, and everything’s warm and wet and honestly, she thinks, sex is one of the messier recreational activities, but Marius is inside her and all around her and holding her and kissing her and loving her, and just for a moment, she feels like she’s transcended.

She feels him slip out of her, but he stays braced over her and strokes his thumb along her cheekbone. “Alright?”

“No one told me this shit was metaphysical.”

He gives a surprised snort, which then turns into a full-on laugh, and she’s always found his laugh contagious, and they lie there together giggling for a good few minutes, high on spring air and those hormones that make people want to snuggle and build blanket forts together.

Both of them are hyper aware of everything that now needs to be washed off their bodies, so they shower together and make absolutely no attempt at further shenanigans while they do it. (“I know my limitations,” Marius says, “and also I’ve seen _The Good Place_ , I fully admit that I have things in common with Chidi Anagonye, and one of those things is that I’m gonna ruin the moment if I try to be sexy.”)

And then, because orgasms really take it out of a person, they end up back in the kitchen, hunting for ice cream.

“Coffee chocolate chip!” Cosette cries in triumph as Marius retrieves two spoons.

“Will you father mind?”

“My father hates coffee-flavored anything, I don’t even know why he has this.” She pries the lid off of the pint container. “Unless it has something to do with—”

She and Marius lock eyes, and it’s clear that they’re both wondering if Cosette is the only Fauchelevent seducing men in this apartment.

She clears her throat. “He’ll just have to deal. Police inspectors can afford their own damn ice cream.”

“Is this our own little fuck-the-police moment?”

“Our friends would be so proud.”

 

“I am so _fucking_ proud of you,” Musichetta says as Cosette unpacks her weekend bag. “This calls for contraband rosé. Go shower and do your skincare thing, though, you are _wrecked_. Did y’all forget to drink water all weekend? I don’t even care. So _fucking_ proud.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> As they always say, write the Marius/Cosette smut you want to see in the world.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Feel free to smash that kudos button if you liked it, and I'd love to hang out in the comments.


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